Nature

A beekeeper friend said there are too many bees atm, and they're starving

Doesn't make sense. You'd think nature would find equilibrium, enough bees would die leaving the remainder with enough food

Not enough food? I assume he means honey bees but anyway I’ve never heard that before. Bramble has just come into flower. The parched urban lawns are full of catsear and buttercups. Flower beds are crammed with ornamental and nectar rich flowers.

My thoughts exactly.
And really loads of bees in our garden this year, and we have a lot of fowers

Just found this in the garden

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Stag beetle, female.

Woahhh. How big was that? Tough to gauge based on the lines in the palm of your hand

About 4 cm
Docile

Thought it was a stag beetle... from the antlers
Lovely

Spotted on wall outside flat. Any ideas?

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That’s a thick legged flower beetle.

Thick legged flower beetle. Look at those sprinter’s thighs.

some bees have made a nest in our roof. maybe two nests - or just one nest with two entry points.

they spend all day frigging about in little circles. then every day a few of them end up just dead on the drive. these animals are going extinct, but they don't exactly help themselves, do they? it's like how in the 90s they couldn't get the zoo pandas to shag. lazy!

then we've had some bluetits nesting in a box that conveniently came attached to our house. all spring the little mummy and daddy blue tit have been feeding the chirpy little babies. then yesterday morning it's 'oop out ya go' and they all get dumped 8 feet onto concrete flagging. one got taken by a magpie, another just kind of gave up and died by about 6pm. i pour out a little liquor.

Imagine if all the baby blue tits survived.

"Are you sure you want to go with that as the opening line, John?"

I was having a 90 minute Teams meeting in a layby off the A418 this morning and I was distracted a bit by this weasel (or stoat?) transferring its kits one by one over the road. I saw it move 4 of them.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/EdtFF8M557wyoJne7

Weasel, I think. Stoats are larger.

This has just been covered in the beekeeping thread, its a weak colony rather than starvation.

Vampire by the river yesterday morning

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Crazy. Is that a Chinese water deer?

Yes, there are quite a lot round our way.

Has anyone fitted or used a night camera to record what’s going on in the garden?

If so any recommendations?

Underwater nature is mind-blowing--I think that we don't know that much about it is actually a good thing. If we did, we'd mess it up even more. :(

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/28/scientists-discover-500-metre-tall-skyscraper-reef-at-australias-great-barrier-reef

Dredging threat to Goodwin Sands:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/29/plans-to-dredge-notorious-ship-swallower-sandbank-condemned

Successful survival strategy.

I used to have se Bushnell, but currently use LtlAcorn
Anything will work in your garden but infra red and black flash are more discreet and pretty much essential out of doors.
Get the best you can afford, image quality gets better, much better, at the top end. The cheap ones are truly dreadful in the dark.
If you might ever use it away from home be very careful about concealment. Also make sure when you set them up that you have a clear line of sight. You might get 999 images of a leaf blowing in the wind.

Out for a club ride last Sunday we came across a fox trapped in a wire fence. It had flipped itself over dislocating it’s trapped hind leg. It was a very sad sight but those first on the scene did really well to free it. They tried desperately to calm it with a blindfold so a vet could be called but it struggled free and across a field. Unfortunate that we couldn’t do more but at least it will be able to hide away for its last moments and not suffer scavengers, unable to defend itself.